The badassery of Borderlands 2 and Steam on Project Shield

We've all seen the CES demos, and salivated while watching Phil put his hands all over one of the prototype Project Shield devices in his hands-on, but there is no way that's enough. We want to see as much as we can about this bad boy, and NVIDIA knows it. Starting today, they will be showing a new Project Shield video every Monday to build our anticipation for the next generation in gaming.

This week, Will from NVIDIA walks us through logging into Steam and playing some Borderlands 2 over the network right on his Project Shield device. It looks simple, the frame rate is great, and even the latency looks low enough to satisfy even the most hardcore gamer. It looks like it really is as badass as NVIDIA is claiming. Hit the break and watch the video.

I don't think shield works via internet only LAN. So I could move from my 27 inch monitor to my living room and play Borderlands on a 5 inch screen where I couldn't see anything.

I don't think this is a great product. It looks good as a stand alone android gaming device but the PC requirements are a little crazy. I just bought an AMD 7950 so it won't work with my PC, I'm not going to drop $350+ for a new video card + whatever shield will cost to play a PC game on a handheld in my own house. I will give it that the HDMI gives it some options but they are ones that if you have a gaming laptop are moot.

wow... the only issue i see is if you dont have a PC thats stout enough you will have to upgrade that AND buy the shield (God only knows how much they will ask.. my bet is $500) the verdict is still out for me but time will tell.

So... Ok wait. So yes it'll play Steam games but they are streamed. While you play Steam games, your PC is doing the work. I get that. So what I am also seeing is that your PC will have something on it's screen of you playing a Steam game. So how is this better than just using a controller at your PC? I'm sure I could go to another room and play but then what? No one else can use that PC. Not that I'd let someone else use my PC but at the same time it also doesn't seem very practical. I love it don't get me wrong but at the same time it's not very practical in the sense of my PC is doing all the work for a tablet remote control.﻿ A tablet remote control that requires you to also have a $300 to $600 video card.

The use-case I can see for it is, say you have your gaming PC hooked up to your big screen TV, but someone else just has to watch a TV show and can't wait. Stream the game to your project shield and you're good.

It's similar to what the WiiU lets you do with the GamePad. Maybe one of these Monday's we'll see nVidia demonstrating second-screen capabilities like what the WiiU GamePad does, allowing for new styles of play on the PC.

Everyone dumped on the new Wii, like always, but now others are silently adding WiiU features to their products. Want to stream a game? The WiiU can do that to the WiiU GamePad. Granted, WiiU doesn't have Borderlands 2, but Steam doesn't have Mario.

Then there's that Android gaming tablet that looks suspiciously similar to a WiiU GamePad.

Alright...it's far more than just a way to stream games from your PC to your TV. It also does EVERYTHING ELSE that Android can do, and has Tegrazone. There are also Tegra 4 specific games launching, like Hawken.

The screen tilts farther than that, but it was a promo video. Made for camera. I'm told that it's very comfortable to hold for long periods of time, and that nVidia paid close attention to the balance and how it feels in your hand (it doesn't "pull your hands down") like you think it would.